[REBOL] Re: [DEV] dbms3.r 01
From: jason:cunliffe:verizon at: 13-Jan-2002 13:40
Gabriele your project is very interesting both for its intended output and
approach.
Vanilla Proposal
My first comment is about achieving the level of collaboration hoped for. I
have been experimenting a lot recently with Vanilla. It is a wonderful
system, offering an excellent platform for all sorts so of joint creative
projects because it fuses the best features of wikis with weblogs. Because
Vanilla is written in REBOL, it is fast and fun work with, and of course a
natural fit for REBOL dev projects.
Pesonal contribution
My REBOL programming skills are minimal, and I know little about dmbs
design, so I am not likely I can contribute much directly there. But I am
very willing to setup and maintain a Vanilla site for dbms3r project.
Hopefully in time the site itself could become a useful testbed for dbms3r.
I am committing this year to a Vanilla-based creative interfaces, so my
effort is already focused there. My initial targets for Vanilla development
includes:
1 - css and imaging extensions supporting a visual matrix toolset for
artists and filmmakers
2 - REBOL source code display and edit [embed colorize, makedoc pro etc]
3 - client-side tools in REBOL/View and Flash5 for easy upload, management,
special display
4 - documentation and special admin [transfer between site, extended snip
management ]
5 - alternative input/output such as email-to-Vanilla
Longer term, more ambitious effort will focus on:
6 - peer-to-peer, site-to-site Vanilla interactions [using rugby / xmlrpc ?]
7 - scalability and strong database options [perhaps dbms3r ??]
8 - remote control and presentation dynamics
9 - dynamic whiteboard
10 - map + geographic extensions
Server
My server is down this week for rebuilding [RedHat 7.2]. Hopefully it will
go smoothly and I can put up a stub site very soon to see how people feel
about the idea in practice. A natural by-product might be to complement the
resonant pearls-of-wisdom approach of Code Conscious.
Risks
- wikitosis
There are problems with wikis - imo they need to be tamed in precise ways,
their features and design presentation need to fulfill to people and
projects much more. I like the idea of them in theory, but hate most of them
in practice. They are fascinating techno-political instruments offering a
glimpse of reclaiming the orginal collaborative promise/visions of 2-way
www [1990] One reason I like Vanilla so much is that it offers rapid ways
to test, tune and compare the systems behavior.
- list culture vs. wiki cultcha
Also how to make such sites cohesive to mailing lists like this and actual
source practice.?
Advantages
All REBOL showcase
fast fun development
community resource
> The problem with native Rebol dbms is - robustness and stability -
> locking, several processes working with one db at once, rollbacks, etc.
> stuff. Have you looked for e.g. at mySQL embedded? It should be just
> some kind of linkable library, so really small, available currently for
> many platforms. Maybe we could adopt that one? It features the same
> interface as full mySQL version ...
hmm... As I understand it, the main point of Gabriele's dbms3r is to offer
REBOL database solution without any external dependencies. Integrating
libraries has many benefits, but risks complexity of installation and
presently has callback issues. Holger wrote that the library callback issue
will be answered in next release. That leaves questions of reinventing
bicycle wheels in Siberia...or not
BerkeleyDB is another option to MySQL. Its available on many platforms, a
rich set of features and API wrappers in many languages. I have used it a
little with Python and Zope and liked it very much.
http://www.sleepycat.com/
Python and Zope have been developing generic syntax for database use to
allow Python developers freedom of choice and scalability with regard to
the actual underlying database library. This seems like a great strategy. A
problem may be very simple to begin with. So for sake of rapid prototyping
and easy installation a developer uses the local generic db toolset. Later
if needed can make the switch. I don't know how well this really works in
practice. It certainly aids consistency in learning and programming and
hopefully makes it more 'client' friendly.
What can dbms3r learn from Python's db interfacing ?
./Jason
